Cookie doughs bakeable to soft and chewy cookie products are well known to the art. Chewy cookie doughs are employed to make single dough cookies which possess a soft crumb structure, as well as to make cookies which possess more than one texture, such as cookies baked from a laminate of one or more layers of a cookie dough bakeable to a crispy texture and one or more layers of cookie dough bakeable to a chewy texture. For example, cookies which are said to mimic the outer crisp and inner soft crumb structure of a freshly baked cookie have been prepared by laminating an intermediate layer of a dough bakeable to a chewy crumb structure between outermost dough laminates which bake to a crispy texture.
Cookie doughs may be formulated to be bakeable to a chewy baked dough texture in a number of ways. For example, a cookie dough bakeable to a chewy cookie product may include as the essential ingredients of the dough: flour, water, shortening, one or more humectants, as well as effective amounts of flavorants, colorants, inclusions, etc. As described in greater detail below, the humectants in the dough function to retain moisture in the baked product so that the crumb matrix of the baked product retains the desired soft and plastic texture characteristic of chewy cookies during conventional shelf-storage periods. It follows that the moisture content bound within the crumb matrix of a chewy cookie is higher than that of a cookie having a crispy texture of comparable age. The initial moisture content of a freshly baked chewy cookie is typically above about 6% or more by weight of the baked dough, whereas the moisture content of a freshly baked cookie having a crispy texture is typically below about 5% by weight of the baked crispy dough.
During the baking of a cookie dough bakeable to a crispy texture, the gluten of the flour and any protein provided by egg or milk products in the dough rapidly begin to coagulate to a flexible and expandable state. At about the same time during the baking process, gas produced by the action of the leavening agent in the dough formulation percolates through and expands the flexible dough mass. As the baking process continues, the coagulated dough sets-up to a relatively rigid expanded condition capable of retaining the fixed impressions (cells or pores) formed by the release of the leavening gas in the dough.
When a dough bakeable to a chewy crumb structure and leavened with a conventional leavening agent is baked, the essential plasticity of the chewy crumb matrix persists after the leavening agent has been consumed. This permits the crumb matrix expanded by the action of the leavening agent to collapse under its own weight, resulting in a reduction in apparent leavening in chewy cookies.
Thus, in cross section, the crumb matrix of a leavened chewy cookie appears different from that of a comparably leavened crispy cookie. In general, moist chewy products (e.g. having above about 7% by weight moisture) leavened with conventional leaveners (e.g. baking soda and a leavening acid) tend to have a dense and compact crumb structure, with fewer cells visible in the crumb matrix and of smaller dimension than a comparably leavened cripsy cookie dough. The crumb structure of chewy cookies is often said to be "cakey."
The porosity of a leavened product refers to the number and distribution of pores of a given size within the crumb matrix. Doughs bakeable to a chewy texture have been leavened in the prior art with baking soda and a leavening acid (e.g. monocalcium phosphate). Although such soda-based leavening systems desirably produce an organoleptically acceptable pH (5.5 to 8.0), and crumb texture in the leavened product, it is desirable from a number of standpoints to enhance the porosity and apparent degree of leavening in chewy textured products over that attained in conventionally leavened chewy cookie products. By increasing the porosity of baked chewy doughs, the baked chewy product, or the chewy region in a dual-textured product, will possess a "lighter" and, therefore, improved mouth-feel. Moreover, the expansion of the chewy region in a dual-textured product due to enhanced leavening may serve to increase the physical dimension of the chewy region relative to the crispy region in a given cookie formulation and, thereby, to desirably contribute to an enhanced degree of consumer perception of "crispness and chewiness" in the cookie product.
It is an objective of this invention to provide an improved method for leavening dough formulation bakeable to plastic and moist crumb matrices, such as chewy cookie doughs or the chewy dough regions in dual-textured (e.g. crispy/chewy) baked goods.
It is also an objective of this invention to provide leavener-containing dough formulations which may be baked by conventional means to a product having a porous and storage-stable leavened crumb structure which approximates the porosity and desirably light and open appearing crumb matrix of conventionally leavened crispy dough products, while at the same time retaining the plastic and moist organoleptic properties characteristic of chewy baked products.
Other objectives of this invention include the provision of cookie dough preforms bakeable to multi-textured baked products employing the leavener-containing doughs of this invention, methods for making such dough laminates, and baked products prepared therefrom having discrete crispy regions as well as discrete chewy regions contributed by the leavener-containing doughs of the present invention.